Dominoes
by botgal
Summary: It's really quite amazing. If you tip over just one domino, it will effect the path of another domino. That's all life is really, just a long, complex string of dominos.
1. Chapter 1

**[I walk up the dusty Arizonan street with directions from a local. With the starless nights and wild animals roaming around, it's no wonder the people still living here are terrified of being struck in the night. The town's police force is armed with a multitude of everything they can get their hands on. I've seen them with .22's, hand rifles, machine guns, swords, even some at street corners leaning on chainsaws. The house I'm looking for is really just a trailer in a plot of land. A large dog barks as I approach and step inside the thankfully air-conditioned trailer. The elderly couple who owns the house welcome me inside cheerfully. The man of the house is named Henry Stevens, and his wife's name is Georgina. I sit down and they begin their story.]**

We never expected there to really be zombies, we both thought it was just some sort of fad the kids were into. Our own granddaughter had an obsession with all sorts of movies and games for all of that kind of stuff. So we didn't think much of it when we heard about some sort of zombie apocalypse over the news, we just thought that it was some new gory kid's game.

**You mean you didn't even pay attention when newscasters were yelling about it all over the news?**

Hey, don't think we didn't notice all of that. But they had those kinds of video game commercials on all the time. How were we supposed to know these ones were any different? Besides, we thought that if anything came after us, Wolf would take care of it.

**Who?**

Wolf is our pet dog. You probably heard him barking outside. We found him out in the desert, he looked like he was part wolf, hence the name we gave him. He was never very wild, though very protective and dominant if strangers ever came to calling. We thought if anything actually DID come our way, he'd just take a bite out of it and whatever it was would just get moving away.

**You were never afraid? When did you finally see that this was all true and not just some video game ad?**

When we saw it with our own eyes! We were in town, it was a flea market day. Georgy here was looking at some pretty earrings when some asian guy comes whoopin' and hollerin' down the street like he'd just sat on a cactus. I looked behind him, and some guy was all twitchy and jerky following him through the market. My friend who was running a food stand, Mike, he stepped forward and tried to make the peace, see what was wrong. But when he stepped out, the guy just bit his shoulder and tore a chunk of meat right out!

**Did the man chasing your friend have anything in his mouth before?**

If he, or, _it,_ did, I didn't notice. All I knew was, this was no kid's video game. I grabbed Georgina and we got to our car fast as we could. Lucky for us even folks like us can out-walk a lurching zombie. We got to our car before the panic really sunk in. The first thing we did was go home and pack up what we had. Radio, food, photo albums, dog bed-

**You were going to take Wolf with you?**

You didn't think we would just leave him did you? Naw, if I did that Georgina would beat the skin off me. We packed up all we could in out pickup and drove to town.

**You were going back to the place you first saw a zombie? I thought you had realized by now-**

I know what you're thinking, we're old, not stupid. There was another town nearby, and news doesn't travel that fast out in the open desert. We grabbed some supplies, some smart-ass kids asked us if we were goin' on a second honeymoon. I just yelled at them about the zombie over in the next town. They just laughed and jeered that we were just running from our own death.

I had known those kids. They were the kind of groups who smoked dope on the corner and busted people's mailboxes with a baseball bat from a pickup truck. Now I look back, it probably would have saved us a whole lotta grief just to have left right then and there.

**The zombies came?**

**[This time Georgina, who had been silent this whole time, speaks up and relates what she thinks]**

Only one, and the kids just thought he was one of the town drunks, they always roamed around the streets when trying to get over a hangover. Henry sped off before it even came within five blocks of us. I put my head down and hugged Wolf's head to my chest as we heard the screams of those kids in the distance.


	2. Chapter 2

**[The bus reaches the end of the line, and my stop. The city streets here are much like those in Arizona. The only difference is that these streets are a bit safer, what with the almost sub-zero temperatures of the Alaskan tundra. I pass a policeman who is currently digging into the ice with a pick. A young man, I'd say at least 28 or so passes by with a metal pole. He nods to me and walks to where the law enforcer is digging. He takes the pole and shoves it deep into the ice. It comes back up blackish-red and snowy. He walks back towards me and introduces himself as Matt Thorndike. This ex-Arizonan has adapted quite well from burning heat to frostbitten cold.]**

Let me just say, I was young, foolish, and just plain idiotic. I was what you might call a classic redneck. I drank, I smoked, I got with women, and I was all-around stupid. I guess it all really started for me when this old couple came to town. I was doing the same as always, hangin' out with my buds, throwing back a few. Then this old man goes running down the street like the devil was after him. He was loaded down with a whole bunch of supplies.

One of my buddies shouted some smart comment, I can't remember what it was. I jeered along with it, the old man just got in the car with what looked like his wife. They had this absolutely HUGE dog with them, I swear that thing looked like it could have torn me in two if I had gotten near it. The old man started yelling something about the walking dead and that we should run from town. It was about then that the first one came around...

**[His voice fades as the memory goes. I feel the need to add a conversation starter but he starts back on his own.]**

Jimmy, my best friend from when we were playing in the sandbox, he had the idea first to go and try to s something offa' the old guy. I never mixed into that kind of stuff, but Jim was on that kind of thing like vultures on a day-old carcass. He headed over, the old-foks just drove off in a dust cloud. Just as Jimbo was trying to grab something from the guy's pocket, the guy grabbed him by the arm and bt down on his neck like some sort of vampire!

My first reaction was to grab a broken bottle and jam it into the guy's face. Then I punched him a good one on the side of the head. I dropped the guy right then and there. Jimmy just fell to the ground, he was dead as a bug under a hiking boot. The dead man musta' torn the jugular vein or somethin'. I thought that he was dead, but then the guy I just dropped opened his eyes real slow-like. Then he started getting back up. It was about then I started getting back to reality.

People were screaming, panicking, everyone was running for their cars. When I figured out what was going on, I ran for my own car. It was just this beat up old pickup, but it got me where I needed. I was just lucky my tank was full and I had just picked up groceries and gas bottles for my folks that day. I was also lucky that my little brother and sister were only right around the corner.

**What about your parents?**

Dead already. They died sometime after little Jo-anna was born.

**Jo-anna?**

My little sister. My little brother, Jason, was born some five years before her. You should know I was about 16 or so at the time. I was the one taking care of them, and I was doing a pretty good job at it, despite what I got into. I had a good job at the gas station, our grandparents sent us money for groceries and the rent if we didn't have enough, financially, we were fine.

Little Jo-anna didn't want to go, I swear I had to make all sorts of promises and bribes just to make her stop crying about having left her favorite dolly behind. Jason was real quiet up until we got home. Jo-anna was still sniffling and he pulled something out of his little backpack. It was her doll! You have no idea how relieved I was when those tears cleared up. There was still one problem though.

**I thought you were alright after that.**

No, we were alright, but Jo-anna wouldn't leave without our cat, Livingston. No matter what I said, she just wouldn't budge. I'm telling you, for a seven-year-old, she was one ornery little dame. I finally caved and grabbed the stupid animal from where he was hidden in the cupboard. I grabbed some long-sleeved clothes, a bit of cat food, more canned and packaged goods, and a few gallons of water and then we took off. We only encountered one G on the way, and he was crawling across the road like a desert tortoise. I just swerved and ran him over.

I'm happy that both the windows were closed, because his brains splattered clear up to the top of the car. If some of that had gotten on the kids...

**[At this moment two children, both looking to be near eighteen or so walk by, one carrying a tabby with a white muzzle, paws, and head. They wave at us and Matt waves back before making a motion to shoo them off. They leave, and he continues]**

We encountered more G's along the way, most were stragglers, one time we ran into a group of at least 10 or so, I just put the pedal to the metal and told Jo-anna to hold on to Livingston. Now that I look back, I'm actually glad she brought that cat along. One night it seemed like he had wandered off, Jason was the one who noticed. He was also the one who noticed when that sneaky little demon came back to camp, dragging behind him a dead rabbit, we ate well that night. Most wouldn't think so, but cats are smart. Also very territorial, which is another thing he served well for besides catching food, a zombie alarm.

**Wouldn't his yowling have attracted more of the undead?**

Oh naw, he didn't just go crazy and start bawling like some would think. No, like I said, cats are smart little devils, and Livingston was one of the smartest little devils to ever have crawled out of Satan's fiery pit. One night I woke up on the floor of the pickup's cab, Jo-anna and Jason were huddled up on the seat with a blanket, and I see Livingston. He was hardly making a sound. He was just sitting under the dashboard, all stiff and serious, every hair on him was standing up straight as a pole. I tried to reach and pet him, but he was just staring at the window and hissed at me like "don't be stupid, look out the window".

I had read stories about something like this, so I grabbed my little handgun and waited. With the way I was before the Gs, I always kept something with a bit of firepower under the dashboard with some ammo. I woke Jason up and told him to get down under the dash and not wake up Jo-anna. He did what he was told, later though, he told me that I had looked at him with the eyes of the angry devil himself. I lowered the window just enough for the barrel to stick out a ways and waited.

Livingston had climbed up with me and every passing second he just stared. Suddenly he yowled so loud my finger slipped and the gun fired. I heard something thump and I turned on my hunting night-vision goggles. I looked out and saw someone, but I didn't want to waste time finding out wether the person was dead or alive. I got the kids back up on the seat and drove.

It was later on that we really got in trouble. In all the panic, we somehow found a plan. Go North. That was it. Money was still worth something then, so I got a ton of heavy blankets. We passed the borderline of Canada about a week later, no one in sight. We stopped to rest in an abandoned hunting lodge, it was somewhere near 30 degrees, so we thought we'd be alright. About the middle of the night I heard something, so I went downstairs to investigate with a length of pipe.

At first I thought it was just the stupid cat making noise, when I was jumped. One of the guests must have been locked in a closet and finally broke free or something. He toppled me over and tried to get at me. He must have been really old, because he had no teeth. Just as he was about to bite my shoulder, his head exploded. At first I thought that Jason had seen this and grabbed my gun. But when I looked up, I saw an eighteen-year-old instead of a eight-year-old.

At that point Jason and Jo-anna had snuck downstairs. Some guy came out of nowhere with a baseball bat behind them and was ready to swing, when that blessed little demon cat of ours pounced from the ceiling and onto the idiot's face and started clawing and biting him like there was no tomorrow. This one chick ran in the door once the guy started screaming and just looked at the scene. Well, let's just say that she let a long stream of choice words fly, though basically, she was just telling us to shut up and sit down.

We did, Jo-anna grabbed Livingston and the second her hands touched him, he went as limp as an oily rag. The guy he attacked grabbed a cloth from his pocket and started soaking up all the blood from the scratches. All the time the little demon was giving him a look like "You leave her alone, you're alright. You try to kill her, you're gonna lose an eyeball."

**Seems like your cat was loyaler than most pets during the Walking Plague.**

The thing loved her, even to a point of an obsession. If she walked into the sea, I swear that cat would be right on her heels. Sorry to cut this short, but my crew has a search scheduled in an hour. Now if you'll excuse me I've gotta go. Here, to make it up to you, I'll give you the address of one of those guys we met in the hunting lodge, they'll take the story from there. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go.


End file.
